Power Health Talk with Dr. Martin Rutherford

Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

So today, we’re gonna talk about something that isn’t gonna sound very sexy but you need to manage your blood sugar, period. I’m morphing more into doing a little bit more education on blood sugar because over this past year so many of the cases that came in here were their success just hung on the ability of us to get their blood sugar correct.

And people would commonly say, “Well, I don’t have a blood sugar problem” (laughs) I’ll say, Well you filled out my assessment form and there’s 16 symptoms on there that would indicate that you have a blood sugar problem if you mark them down and you have all of them.

So then the next retort from the patient is usually, but my blood tests are normal kinda like the Hashimoto’s thing. And I’m telling you that is so common. I found that when I get patients from other practitioners, alternative practitioners and functional medicine practitioners, the first thing I look at now is the blood sugar because it’s just not really emphasized the way that it should be.

Why is it important? First of all, blood sugar is used by every single every single cell in your body. We did a back to basics of functional medicine I did do a segment on blood sugar. I think this one’s gonna sound a little different than that one, but in the end in that segment we talked about how blood sugar is foundational to everything.

Every cell in your body needs proper balance of blood sugar every single cell in your body has insulin receptors so that sugar can get in there. And sugar works with your, the mitochondria these little energy mechanisms in your cells to create energy.

Okay, too much blood sugar is not good too little blood sugar is not good. Hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia. Well I don’t have hypoglycemia. The vast majority of patients who come in here have hypoglycemia.

But their numbers are normal. If you look at that… And so this goes back to the functional medicine model has different ranges but even within the functional medicine ranges A lot of times the lab tests are normal while this person is sitting there if I don’t eat, I get irritable, shaky, I wanna choke my wife or my husband, I get agitated, I get anxiety, I crave sweets, and you cannot even begin to go into all of the things that physiologically are affected by that.

For example, your thyroid hormones can’t convert properly into active thyroid hormones in other words you’ve got a perfectly normal thyroid and yet if your blood sugar’s off, your thyroid hormones may not be converting into the proper form to actually activate your energy in your cells.

If your blood sugar’s fluctuating all over the place, you may not be able to make the proper neurons in your brain to be happy, to be motivated. If you don’t have them, you may be you may have anxiety, you may have a.

.. even as much as panic attacks So the blood sugar is incredibly important. I think the thing that I’m wanting to say today is most of you have normal blood sugar tests. People come in here I mean like 70% of people come in here that blood sugar abnormality is a big part of their symptom picture that they’re coming in here for.

Whether it’s Hashimoto’s or another autoimmune disease or gut problem and no one’s even talked to them about it. Because the blood tests were normal. And so the thing is there’s like seven different levels of blood sugar abnormalities, for a medical doctor to tell you that you have hypoglycemia, low blood sugar I mean you have you be practically dead.

I mean, you’re supposed to be like it’s supposed to be the numbers less than 60 or 50 depending on who you’re looking at. By that time, your blood sugars are so low. Your brain is not getting any oxygen from your blood sugar.

I’m sorry, your brain’s not getting your blood sugar your muscles aren’t getting any blood sugar and your cells aren’t getting any blood sugar and you’re passing out and you’re getting lightheaded and you don’t feel good and all that Kind of like a diabetic, who hasn’t taken her insulin.

And so that’s hypoglycemia They’ll diagnose you with low blood sugar if you come in like that. But the vast majority of you, it’s not like that. The vast majority of you it’s again, if I eat, I feel better.

Cause my lecturer comes out. If I don’t eat for long periods of time, I get irritable I get shaky, I get nasty, I get tremors Maybe I get blurred vision (laughs) There’s a number of things that happen when you’ve got low blood sugar that you’d never connect to your blood sugar.

And so and the doctors, maybe they run a blood sugar Maybe they don’t. If they run a blood sugar, they go it’s normal. Well, here’s the problem. You may not have as much damage to the receptor sites in your cells to be able to register as low blood sugar on your test.

And that’s not a theory. I mean, that’s a fact. Some of the things that I’ve read have said that it may take as much as seven years for you to show up for low blood sugar and or the next sugar problem up the line which is insulin resistance.

And here, just to drive you crazy If you have insulin resistance, which you might call pre-diabetes, insulin resistance If you have some other things you might call it metabolic syndrome. It’ll take even longer for the damage to be done for that to show up.

So now you have metabolic syndrome You’re overweight your blood pressure’s high, you eat and you fall asleep afterwards. You just crave sugar all the time. You can’t lose weight. You’re urinating all the time and when they do your blood sugar, you’re fine.

Or even better they might say, well your diabetes you’re not diabetic type 2 yet. So we’ll just wait until you get to be diabetic. And then we’ll take care of it. In the meantime, you’re having all this damage from being either pre-diabetic or low blood sugar which we call functional hypoglycemia.

You’re not dying because you’re below 60 but you have low blood sugar. And every time you don’t eat for hours or you don’t feel like eating first thing in the morning ’cause your blood sugar is in the toilet and it’s setting off as stress response and it makes you nauseous This is damaging tissues.

For those of you who watch my Hashimoto’s stuff this is creating inflammatory responses against your thyroid. So the blood sugar is huge. And to make it even better (laughs) if you have low blood sugar and if you have high blood sugar not metabolic syndrome, not diabetes type 2, pre-diabetes, low blood sugar, pre-diabetes they bang back and forth.

So then you get symptoms of both. You get symptoms of, I eat, I don’t eat and I get irritable and shaky I eat and then I fall asleep right afterwards. You get a lot of symptoms of… That are very confusing.

And so you can have all of those blood sugar symptoms take the test and not have it show up. Now, there is a test that you can run. It’s a three hour test and you take a person’s blood sugar levels and insulin levels over a period of three hours.

And usually at the end of two or three hours that person whose lab tests were normal but has all the symptoms will show up. Whether it’s higher or it’s low is that helpful? Yeah, It’s very helpful to me because it helps me to lean my supplementation or my recommendations or my dietary lifestyle recommendations to one or the other.

And so, but I cannot emphasize blood sugar enough like you have to follow the fuel. If the person doesn’t have oxygen getting to their cells if a person doesn’t have blood sugar getting in their cells, getting to their cells, you’re gonna have a hard time for that person to get well of anything because they’re not getting enough energy in their cells to really create enough of a response to a healing response so that they can respond to whatever dietary changes or supplementation or lifestyle changes or any of those types of things.

So I could go on for blood sugar for a long time. It is so huge. And yet most people have no idea that some of these profound symptoms that they’re experiencing, inability to lose weight. Yeah, it could be thyroid but let me tell you a lot of times it’s that pre-diabetic who’s been told you’re okay.

Or you don’t have pre-diabetes or you got pre-diabetes let’s wait until you’re diabetic. We’ll wait for that. That will stop you. That will stop you from losing weight. And there’s so many of those instances so managing your blood sugar is huge.

There’s a lot of good stuff online as far as general general things to do for it. But really at some point you need to figure out either symptom-wise or by testing Do I have low blood sugar? Do I have functional hypoglycemia? Do I have insulin resistance? Pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, diabetes type 2 or diabetes type 1.

That’s blood sugar. It’s a blood sugar. It’s not just like, no I don’t have diabetes. My blood sugar is okay (laughs) It’s way more than that. And believe me in dealing with autoimmunity Hashimoto’s, all the things weight loss all these types of things You better know your blood sugar and you better be addressing if it’s not right.

Or a lot of things you’re trying are going to fail.